in International Journal of Discrimination and the Law (2014), 14(4), 221-243

Through their different encounters with union, court, and government equality agency lawyers, workers report diverse understandings of their personal experience of injustice in the workplace. This paper ... [more ▼]

Through their different encounters with union, court, and government equality agency lawyers, workers report diverse understandings of their personal experience of injustice in the workplace. This paper examines workers’ experiences of discrimination and the role legal professionals play in litigating these issues in Belgium. Bringing together legal and rights consciousness studies and the sociology of intermediation and tracking different stages in the construction of discrimination cases, from the moment when a future litigant describes an event as an injustice to the moment when the judge recognises a discriminatory behaviour (or conversely, dismisses a case), we suggest several possible empirical explanations of the way in which interactions with legal intermediaries affect workers’ rights consciousness. Because we refer to socio-legal studies from common law countries, this paper also calls into question how best to import these studies to assist in analysing legal mobilisations and legal consciousness in continental Europe. [less ▲]

The author focuses on issues linked to the coming into operation in France since the end of the 1990s of a policy of access to rights that depends primarily on informing and advising citizens about the ... [more ▼]

The author focuses on issues linked to the coming into operation in France since the end of the 1990s of a policy of access to rights that depends primarily on informing and advising citizens about the law. When and why did the lack of socialization of the law come to be considered the main explanation of the citizens’ difficulties in asserting their rights ? In what degree has the framing of this policy in terms of accessibility influenced the direction given to the measures set in place since the end of the 1990s ? The replies are supported by a qualitative survey car- ried out between 2006 and 2010. [less ▲]

Strategic litigation is one of the methods used by equal opportunity agencies in Europe to promote rights. Looking at the organizational level, this article aims to show how and under which circumstances ... [more ▼]

Strategic litigation is one of the methods used by equal opportunity agencies in Europe to promote rights. Looking at the organizational level, this article aims to show how and under which circumstances strategic litigation is deemed relevant to fight employment discrimination in Belgium and on which grounds and arguments exemplary cases are chosen. The article also highlights possible changes in the mobilizations of courts and the judicial arena. [less ▲]

Strategic litigation is one of the methods used by equal opportunity agencies in Europe to promote rights. Looking at the organizational level, this article aims to show how and under which circumstances ... [more ▼]

Strategic litigation is one of the methods used by equal opportunity agencies in Europe to promote rights. Looking at the organizational level, this article aims to show how and under which circumstances strategic litigation is deemed relevant to fight employment discrimination in Belgium and on which grounds and arguments exemplary cases are chosen. The article also highlights possible changes in the mobilizations of courts and the judicial arena. [less ▲]

Strategic litigation is one of the methods used by equal opportunity agencies in Europe to promote rights. Looking at the organizational level, this article aims to show how and under which circumstances ... [more ▼]

Strategic litigation is one of the methods used by equal opportunity agencies in Europe to promote rights. Looking at the organizational level, this article aims to show how and under which circumstances strategic litigation is deemed relevant to fight employment discrimination in Belgium and on which grounds and arguments exemplary cases are chosen. The article also highlights possible changes in the mobilizations of courts and the judicial arena. [less ▲]

Strategic litigation is one of the methods used by equal opportunity agencies in Europe to promote rights. Looking at the organizational level, this article aims to show how and under which circumstances ... [more ▼]

Strategic litigation is one of the methods used by equal opportunity agencies in Europe to promote rights. Looking at the organizational level, this article aims to show how and under which circumstances strategic litigation is deemed relevant to fight employment discrimination in Belgium and on which grounds and arguments exemplary cases are chosen. The article also highlights possible changes in the mobilizations of courts and the judicial arena. [less ▲]

Acts of disobedience are increasing today. Dissident behaviors express new types of political commitment and mobilization. Madrid indignant protesters, Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street are some manifestations of this phenomenon. Beside collective movements, other conducts of disobedience are less visible, but equally important; for instance, when a citizen refuses to pay taxes or do not comply with traffic rules or refuses to participate in the election when vote is compulsory. These ordinary conducts are also part of the contestation of social norms and order. In non-democratic or in transition to democracy countries, scholarly works have highlighted how complex the phenomenon of non-compliance with rules is. They have showed the existence of a culture of non-compliance, linked not only to the problem of national State legitimacy but similarly to the influence of other normative orders, such as tradition or religion. Disobedient citizens experience a tension between, on the one side, what they consider as the moral norms or customary rules, and, on the other side, the current legal norms. How these plural normative orders are connected one to each other and how they affect the rule of law and the democratic regimes? Through this workshop, we want to examine how citizens experience the law and the rules in different social and political settings. Crossing different approaches – Sociology, Political science, Law, and Anthropology – allows us to analyze both organized and collective behaviors of disobedience, such as destroying GMO crops or commercial billboards, as well as ordinary and individual conducts of non-compliance to the rules, such as cheating during an exam or breaking the traffic laws. These different forms of disobedience and non-compliance invite us to think about the articulation between individual and collective behaviors (to the extent that each conduct of non-compliance is embedded in a larger social context and contributes, in return, to shape it) and between political and self-interested acts of resistance. The phenomenon of non-compliance to the rules can be analyzed from two perspectives: one, from the point of view of the actor (individual or collective) who are involved; the other from the purposes of action (interest-oriented or value-oriented). By crossing these two focuses, four practices of disobedience can be distinguished: (1) the non-compliance by an individual, as a selfish and interested practice, for example when a driver jumps the lights or when a citizen does not pay taxes; (2) the non-compliance by an individual who thinks the norm is unjust or immoral, for example when a physician does not follow the law in the case of abortion; (3) the non-compliance by a group in order to fulfill its interests, for example the gas smuggling practices on the border between two countries and; (4) the non-compliance by a group on behalf of shared values, for example indignant protesters. These different forms of disobedience and non-compliance to the norms allow us to analyze dissident legal mobilizations and highlight activities which differ from conventional political protestation. Through these questions, we suggest more broadly to examine how ordinary citizens experience the law and the legality and which cultures of legality are constructed in different social and political contexts. In short, the comparative analysis of disobedience practices allows us to think about the relationship between legality and legitimacy and between the law and other normative orders. [less ▲]

Some scholarly works have highlighted the diffusion of the US disability rights model in Europe, considering that a disability rights’ revolution was underway. They have also identified sources of ... [more ▼]

Some scholarly works have highlighted the diffusion of the US disability rights model in Europe, considering that a disability rights’ revolution was underway. They have also identified sources of resistance to the diffusion of this “civil rights’ frame” to address disability issues in Europe (Burke, 2004; Heyer, 2002; Vanhala, 2011; Waldschmidt, 2009). Focusing on legal mobilizations against disability discrimination in the workplace, I analyze and compare how government agencies (the Swedish Ombudsman against discrimination and the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), as well as non-governmental organizations in both countries, address these issues. How do the structures of national institutions frame legal mobilizations against disability discrimination in each country? Do they tend to converge in the way they mobilize the law to address these issues? Through investigative techniques consisting primarily of open-ended interviews with lawyers working in NGOs and in government agencies for equality in the United States and in Sweden, I highlight several challenges faced by studies on disability rights, especially when they describe and explain convergence of legal mobilizations, and try to offer suggestions for overcoming these challenges. More broadly, this contribution aims to call into question the processes of transnationalisation and policy transfer from one country to another. [less ▲]

Some scholarly works on legal mobilization have highlighted the diffusion of litigious policies to address social problems in Europe, considering that a rights’ revolution was underway; others have ... [more ▼]

Some scholarly works on legal mobilization have highlighted the diffusion of litigious policies to address social problems in Europe, considering that a rights’ revolution was underway; others have identified sources of resistance to the diffusion of the mobilization of the courts as a mechanism for promotion of rights in Europe. European national agencies for equality, created in the 2000s to address discrimination issues, use litigation to produce social change, both at national and supranational levels. Their strategies, if not new, may tend to redefine legal mobilization against unlawful treatment in the workplace in Europe. In this paper, I analyze how the Belgian and the Swedish equality agencies select the cases they bring to court. How and according to which criteria do they choose, among the complaints they receive, the ones which are relevant for litigation? Although litigation policy at the organizational level has been studied in scholarly works, only a few scholars have examined how European networks influence the internal decision-making. How does Equinet, the European network of equality agencies, promote common frames of interpreting and addressing discrimination in the workplace among European countries? Referring to recent works on social structure and individual actor agency, this contribution aims to highlight organizations’ constraints and resources within different legal regimes, current anti-discrimination policies and legal culture. More broadly, this contribution aims to call into question the processes of transnationalisation and policy transfer from one country to another within the European Union. [less ▲]